East Midlands: “St Ann’s Allotments, Nottingham - Heritage Open Day and Oral History Exhibition”

Apple Juicing St Ann’s Allotments, or Hungerhill Gardens, are Grade II* listed allotments in Nottingham’s inner city. Once ‘detached urban pleasure gardens’ enjoyed by the Victorian middle class, they are now home to gardeners from all walks of life enjoying the benefits of its good soil and the sense of escape to a hidden garden in the heart of the city. Over two-thirds of the 680 allotments are let to gardeners; many of whom have been gardening on, or had links to the site for many years. The oral history project gathered the fascinating stories of thirteen gardeners and presented them in an exhibition on the allotments’ Heritage Open Day in September 2005.

Gardeners described how horticultural skills from Jamaica, Ireland or the Lincolnshire farms were adapted to the different conditions of an inner city allotment.

Go Karting in the allotment“When I look back at the garden man, I’m looking back when I was younger, “Sid, you’re not going to school today, you’re carrying some stick for the yam!” So I just grew up in it. Nobody explain to me. Even now when sometime I’m planting, people tell me it’s too cold and tings. I put them in, my mind tell me. And they come! They come.”

The social and health benefits of the allotments were also celebrated in the exhibition:

I don’t know what I’m going to do when I’ve given my garden up completely. I’ll still come up and see the lads. We’re like one big happy family. We never argue about anything because we’re always laughing and chatting, passing the time away, it’s great.

The exhibition was hung in the ‘Supershed’ – a straw bale building on the Ecoworks allotment. It made a perfect backdrop for the exhibition, with visitors being able to watch the walls being filled in on the open day.

The Heritage Open Day itself was great success, the Outreach Officer Adele Williams working with members of the St Ann’s Allotments Network to offer a range of family friendly craft and gardening activities. Hanging baskets were planted, slates etched, and bird feeders moulded around a smoking fire. Visitors were even able to pick and juice their own apples from the allotment’s orchards.

St. Ann’s allotments have distinctive green avenues with intriguing doorways hidden in the hedgerows. Garden tours allowed visitors to peer into private and community gardens and to explore a unique example of our gardening heritage. Hundreds of visitors enjoyed the Open Day, and many have returned to other events on the allotments. 

We plan to continue to gather oral histories of the allotments, exploring their social, horticultural and architectural history; and to share these with the surrounding communities of St Ann’s.